Hey guys!
So I was into magic on and off for most of my childhood years before I got hardcore into magic. I remember having a magic set when I was around six, which had a marked deck inside. I wanted to use it so bad, but I could never remember the pattern for the markings and gave up.
Flash forward to around my middle school years. I was at an overnight camping event with Boy Scouts, and one of the leaders showed me and three of my friends the effect where you try to find the spectator's card a few times and put all the wrong guesses in a pile, and then when they hit the pile out of your hand, their selection if the only one still in your hand. It blew my mind and when I got home I started looking up card trick, but after a little while I stopped that as well.
Then, in 2010, I was in Maine for another Boy Scout event, but this time for a week. Two of my friends both knew a couple magic tricks that I could not figure out, and it pissed me off. Even one of my other friends figured out one, which was the ACR with the four jacks robbing a bank. Luckily for me, he flashed the cards, and I figured it out, but that got me back in the game again for another few weeks before giving it up again.
Flash forward a little less than a year to spring break 2011. My birthday was the week before, and my best friend got me a poker set. I also played a lot of card games at school (I still do, especially 13 now), so I brought the crappy deck from the set to school in my pocket everyday. For Spring Break my family went to Myrtle Beach, and when my sister and I got our Easter baskets, I saw a deck of Dragonbacks in mine. My mom said I should take those to school everyday and leave the poker deck with the poker set. A couple days later, while we were at one of the souvenir shop centers, I, being the huge child that I am (I was 16 at the time) told my family I wanted to go into the magic shop there, since that was the only place in there that seemed remotely interesting. The old guy working there showed us the Svengali Deck, and I couldn't understand it to save my life. Almost immediately after, he showed us both the pen through dollar and the electronic rating pen tricks, and I went crazy. I couldn't believe either one of them. So I bought the Svengali Deck and went home and learned as many card tricks as I could find for free online. I've been doing magic ever since.